The summer is nearly gone – completely gone according to the temperatures the past two weeks – and sometimes all it seems we’ve done is pack and then move and then unpack, did a little more unpacking, and then just for good measure we threw in a touch more unpacking.

Which isn’t completely true of course, just mostly true.

What is also true is one thing I/we didn’t do this summer was blog. Sorry ’bout that. I’m thinking that will change when the fall routine picks up in a couple of weeks, but I can’t promise anything.

We have done a fair amount of work this summer to get settled into this house but to be fair, we also have had some holiday time this summer too. Plus we still do have the kids & our (week)daily routines of daycare and work and play and bath (etc etc) to do in amongst all of the overriding and pressing house things.

We started off the summer right by taking an extra long weekend and visiting the Burin Peninsula for the first time – well mine & the girls first time, not Cory’s. We’ve gone to the Farmer’s Market every weekend that we’ve been in town. We got out to Codroy Valley for the first week in August, with an overnight at a lovely cabin (nearly a house) in Sandy Cove (Eastport). We were lucky enough to be invited to a cabin in Renews for a night last weekend. And we’ve tried to maximize the daylight hours and the fact that we now live in a family-friendly neighbourhood by taking the girls to the playground that is a stone’s throw from our house or the park (that includes a larger playground) that is a 5 minute walk away in the evenings either before or after supper.

And even if we didn’t move houses and weren’t distracted/obsessed with making this house a home AS SOON AS POSSIBLE I’ve recently realized – you just can’t do everything. There is the idea of the prototypical summer and *all* the things you are supposed to do in said summer to make it a quote-unquote good summer for you and your family. But the prototypical summer doesn’t exist, not in reality anyway – only in our minds. A combination of several summers we’ve lived over our childhoods, teenage years, early or middle adulthoods (note: I’m just starting to experience ‘middle’ adulthood, right?).

Also, let’s face it: aiming to achieve all the summer activities you want to is exponentially more difficult when you live in ST. JOHN’S FARKING NEWFOUNDLAND where the typical summer occurs from July 1st to August 15th – if you are lucky. This year we weren’t lucky. To put it mildly.

Anyway, tonight I’m reflecting on being in this house for a month, feeling on the one hand like this is home and on the other hand that we still have so much more to do to make this place comfortable, and lamenting the loss of summer. It was 12 degrees celsius for most of the day, so please forgive me that last one.

Whatever you’ve done this summer, big or small, important or not – I hope you’ve enjoyed it. And that you’ve had a longer summer than we have.

Well we didn’t drink the liquor. But we didn’t pour it all out either. Just some of it.

We are moved in to the new house. I can’t stop saying this, but – it is big. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, grow in to it, but it’s just so much bigger than what we had that it might take a while.

We moved in on Wednesday so today is our fourth day here. We have moved in and unpacked enough to be able to eat, bathe and sleep – and a little bit of play for the girls. But we haven’t unpacked and organized most of the girls toys and books. And Elsa doesn’t even have a dresser and with no shelves like we had at Wexford, well there’s nowhere to unpack her clothes except in Merrin’s room. Which might not be a bad idea anyway. But I really have to unpack more of the books and toys, and put pictures and such up on their walls.

Today we bought a lot of things. We spent about $5000 but at the same time we saved $2000 – so that’s good right?

We did buy a lot of things that we needed, desperately, for years. So it was nice to get them now for this gigantic* mansion** that we own.

Things we bought today:
bedroom set (5 piece)
kitchen table & 4 chairs
patio table set
lawnmower
leather storage bench
book/toy shelves
things related to internet & lighting

Things we almost bought today:
dining room set incl. hutch
microwave
light fixtures
mirrors
more things related to lighting

So we are getting there. We are filling in to this house, getting settled, getting comfortable.

But it will be a lot more comfortable when we get one of those robot vacuum cleaners – for sure!

* not really
** really not really

Thank you Orange Men for giving me the day off to do some much needed packing!

Even if it is going a bit slow. It is also a day off after all, right?

I’ve packed more than a dozen so far. Lots of things from the kitchen & dining room, including framed pictures. Wrapped in sweaters and blankets when protection is needed.

I’m sitting in front of the dining room cupboard looking at both opened and unopened bottles of alcohol. Wine, whisky, rum and liqueurs:

9 bottles homemade wine (blueberry, blackberry, squashberry, peach & grapefruit
1 bottle Lamb’s Amber Rum
>1/2 bottle Crown Royal
1/2 bottle Kahlua, Baileys, Grand Marnier & Vermouth
couple drinks/shots each:
Tequila
Gold Rum
White Rum
Dark Rum
Spice Rum
Gibsons Whisky

I’m thinking we should have a (semi)post-packing party on Saturday night. I want this stuff – at least most of it – gone and not to be moved.

Okay, enough procrastinating packing, writing blog posts dreaming about a blowout party won’t get us ready to move!

I’m about to go tackle some more of the kids things. Items on shelves and some books and toys.

Think I might need some of the alcohol before the day is through.

Happy Birthday!

We’re back all safe and sound from your mini-vacation to the Burin Peninsula. It was a relaxing and enjoyable time away, and I’m glad we went.

I plan to tell you more in a later post about:

- our lovely (and cheap!) accomoation

- the Welcome to Grand Bank sign that we took over as a picnic area

- the Winterland EcoMuseum that was a great ‘at our pace’ activity

- Golden Sands Resort (?? resort ??) that was a bit too, busy (to choose a polite word), for us but provided the first outside swim of the year

- the fun (for the kids) and touching, even heartbreaking, but awesome playground

But until I get all that written down, take a look at these pictures here would ya!

We are on a mini-vacation. We took July 2nd off to make it a 4-day weekend. We are on the Burin Peninsula; the girls and my first time. We are staying in Garnish.

It’s wonderful, and I will blog about it later.

For nine days, prior to us coming here, Cory was in Germany. For ‘work’. Though to hear it from him or his co-workers – or to judge yourself from the following – it was more of a vacation than a business trip.

See it for yourself here, and determine if you think that if you drink that much beer and eat that much food you can still call it work.

Now if he’d just stop whining about Germany (and its driving and beer and food) and enjoy this family vacation we’d be doing all right.

Up until about a year ago Merrin was a very good eater. She had her favourite foods (broccoli) and then the things she would not touch (meat), but overall she ate decent amounts of good food. She’s always had this annoying habit of wanting to eat food separately – so instead of eating chicken & vegetable fried rice she’ll eat chicken and peas and carrots and rice. It drives me nuts as 1) it takes extra effort to prep the food separately even though the ingredients are the same as what we’re making, and 2) there’s just no friggin’ need of it, I mean COME ON!

Lately Merrin has been eating less food overall; some days she’s hungrier and eats more than others but on average she’s eating less food. I try not to make too big a deal of it, and am mindful not to give her too much to snack on before/between meals, and am chaulking it up to that’s she’s growing older and doesn’t need to eat quite as much food as she did when she was a busily sprouting toddler.

So far Elsa has been a great eater too. AND she doesn’t require her food to be prepared separately – she’s fine to eat mixed fried rice or a casserole or chili or even spaghetti with sauce on it (yes, nowadays Merrin only wants ‘plain’ spagetti).

But lately Elsa has been also eating less at home. Not every day, just every now and again. Reports from daycare strongly suggest that she has a healthy appetite while there. This morning I dropped her at the daycare and it wasn’t her regular daycare provider that was there to greet her. I let her know that Elsa didn’t eat much for breakfast so if she became hungry earlier in the morning that day why, and to let her eat more and/or earlier snack. The woman exclaimed, “Well, she doesn’t have a problem eating that’s for sure!” Laughing at the thought of Elsa refusing food, I’m sure.

Tonight for supper Cory made an excellent pasta dish: spinach fettucini with a white lemon-herb sauce (white chives, garlic chives, oregano, basil) tossed with grape tomatoes, yellow & orange peppers and onion. It went some good with a glass of Dad’s bakeapple wine (for me) and a Dos Equis beer (for Cory)! Yum-mers!

As required, Cory made a separate dish for the girls. They got: spinach fettucini, tomato, peas, bacon rashers (homemade ‘bits’), fried egg whites (Cory used some in the sauce for our dish).

Elsa demolished her egg and bacon and ate a few pieces of fettucini while Merrin picked at hers. Elsa then began demanding more egg. We told her she had to eat some peas first, or tomato (which Elsa hates), before getting more egg. She kept up asking for more egg, shutting her mouth and turning her head to refuse the spoons of peas I was waving in front of her.

I gave in and let her have *just one piece* of eggwhite that Merrin wasn’t eating (surprise surprise) as long as she’d eat some peas afterwards. Guess what happened? She gobbled up the egg and then refused the spoon of peas while simultaneously demanding more egg. Another big surprise.

Merrin, who by now was scarfing down the fettucini because it was made with spinach – “I LOVE spinach mom!” (yes, a recent development) – and peas – likely because they were the same colour as the spinach pasta – was watching this all unfold and herself began prodding Elsa to eat her peas.

“Elsa, you just have to eat one or two spoons of peas to get more egg. You want more egg? Or bacon? Just eat some peas, that’s all. Just one spoon is good. Or two. Just try it.”

Elsa was listening and was nodding her head in agreement. As she does anytime Merrin is talking to her. Receiving some encouragement Merrin spooned some peas onto her spoon, gets up from her chair and walks to the other side of the table where Elsa is seated in her highchair, and then puts the entire spoonful of peas in Elsa’s open and willing mouth.

And then goes back to get more peas, to once again feed to a happy and hungry Elsa.

This played out several times more while Cory and I looked at each other, trying not to laugh, and taking sips of our drinks between chuckles.

You know if you’ve read the comments section that we did put an offer in on the house we want to buy. Usually, I believe, there is 24 hours to respond to the offer. The owners of the house we want asked for 36 hours to respond, and we agreed.

38 hours later they responded. They accepted, with two minor changes.

YIPPEE!

Except, it isn’t time to breath a sigh of relief yet.

Our offer to them had a condition attached; that it was dependent on our house selling within the next 30 days. As such, technically their house is still on the market. They can show it to other prospective buyers and accept offers from them. If they do get another offer they have agreed to tell us, and we have 48 hours to respond to it, ie: to get our house sold or come up with the mortage for the new house as well as maintain the mortage on our current house. So now we have the rush on to get this house sold.

From noon on Friday to close to suppertime today (Saturday) we were flat-out getting the house “market ready” – cleaning and painting and purging and tidying. The house was put on the market at about the same time we went to bed on Friday night – after midnight. I woke at 6am this morning (thanks Merrin!) and began cleaning up starting at 7am.

Tonight as I sit here, full of nearly a litre of beer, I am enjoying this house. Yes, the beer helps. The house if very clean and tidy – it’s almost as if another family lives here. A much more responsible and less messy family. I’m almost feeling like this house is not that bad and we could stay here for longer than originally planned.

Almost. But not quite.

Although if things don’t work out as we’d like, we may have to.