more photos

This is the sledding hill across the street in Calgary. Before the warm snap hit, and it got up to +9, turning everything into slush, John and Mike spent a lot of time sledding. John loves it! He likes to go down by himself now, and he laughs like a loon the whole way down. This is the looong climb up the big hill.

Arriving at the bottom of the hill

Even Joan loves to slide!

John of the Jungle - this was taken in Edmonton. He named this plastic plant "Ferny" and was central to many jungle-themed games.

What a cutie. Joan loves playing with John's boots, because if you hit them on the ground, they have flashing lights. Who needs toys!?

Things have been a little uneventful here since I posted last. Mike had three days off, but we did nothing. He got out his map, and I know he was thinking "road trip" but he was wiped, so we just spent time at home and around the city. Got caught up on some niggly chores. The house deal got finalized on Thursday, while he was off, but we didn't even celebrate. It was sort of all very anticlimactic. I think the posession is only exciting for the buyer - picking up the keys, going in for the first time. From our end, it all ended with a voicemail from our lawyer the day before saying everything was finalized. Meh. Now we just wait for everything to shake out - the mortgage has yet to be actually paid out. The utilities are busy calculating final bills. So it will still drag on for a bit longer. But it's nice to know that it's all his problem now! I asked the agent if she knew what he had planned for the house. She said he's planning to fix it all up, but isn't sure if it's a flip, or if he plans to actually live in it. If he plans to flip it, it would be neat to see what he does.

Actually, I guess you could say we celebrated with a trip to the bank to start the kids' RESPs! At long last. We've never had even the prospect of any money to even bother starting it, but now, things should start looking up, so we headed down and opened them up. We had to go get our pension stuff from our previous jobs rolled over anyway, so we figured, why not?

Speaking of real estate, the landlord is getting a bank appraisal on our place next week. The management company called to let us know, and they said "he's doing something with his mortgage." I'm going to think positively, and just tell myself he's refinancing, or something like that. Hopefully, he's not planning to sell. The movers who moved us in here predicted we'd be looking for a new place soon, because typically these little places get sold off for "infill" - where they doze the building and build a bigger, taller apartment block in its place. Hopefully, that's not the case. I don't think I can handle another move really soon!

Kids are doing great! Joan has started playing "imaginary" games, which is fun to watch. She'll reach into an empty box, and pretend to pull something out and give it to me. She does it over and over again. Then, when i pretend to hand her something, she holds out her hand to accept it, and puts it back in the box. She likes to feed me, too. She'll reach out, with a glob of food in her fingers, and open her mouth and say "ahhh", which is her eating signal. If I lean over and open my mouth, she'll pop the food in, and giggle. She spent about half an hour feeding me grapes one night. It was great. But she won't do it for anyone else. She's also started pushing on her bad arm - the other day, she actually hoisted herself up to sitting from lying down using just her right arm! She likes to follow me around the house, now, too. Instead of screaming if I leave her in a room, she just chugs along after me.

John's doing well. He's been having a lot of what can only be called flashbacks. He'll suddenly start talking about something that happened months ago - largely revolving around the move. The other night, out of nowhere, he started talking about the junk removal guys, and how they were cool, and he got to go out and help them. That was almost four months ago!! He talks a lot about the truck ride, and the movers making the house "naked." and watching all the things going into the truck, or picking me up at the airport. He never talks about the bad things - all the memories seem to make him happy. I'm not sure if this is something we should be worried about. When the memories come up, we just talk about them until he's ready to move on. But they just keep coming up, and they're surprisingly vivid, the way he's describing things. He's remembering school, too. He talks about Becky and Sue, his teachers. He talks about certain games they used to play. He talks A LOT about Keira - the one girl in the class. One night, he stormed up to us, arms folded, and announced, "I want to go to Keira's house. RIGHT NOW!" When we asked him who Keira was, he flipped his hand and mumbled "she's just a girl." It was so cute! His first crush, I think. He talks about her a lot. The other day, I had pulled over in front of a mailbox, which was in front of a group of row houses, and out of nowhere, he asked, all excitedly, "Is this where Keira lives?" Poor guy.

Oh, I hear a pitter patter upstairs. Must be John, looking for me, so I'd better go! I promised him a trip to the really big park today, which is six or seven blocks away, across icy sidewalks. Should be exciting. We'll be on foot - our car is out of commission with a flat tire. Mike told John he could help him fix it tonight, which John is soooo excited about. John told me last night that he would need a big lunch today, so that he would be big and strong enough to help dad lift the car up.

I'll be back again soon - I'll try to get some pictures of our place here in Calgary, now that we're a little more settled in.