Awesome

I had the BEST news from Downunder last night - my best friend is pregnant! After years of trying, many doctor's appointments, specialist's appointments, tests, signing on to be foster parents & completing foster parent training just recently, she's fallen pregnant! Just like that! Funny how that happens, you resign yourself to believing it won't happen for you and you make your peace with that, then BOOM! Pregnant! I cannot express how happy I am for her & her husband, it could not happen to two nicer people. I cannot wait to see what this baby looks like! It's still early days, though, so think good thoughts, if you will, and send good vibes all the way to Australia.

Sounds like heaven

Why did no one tell me that Daniel Craig AND Hugh Jackman are in a play together. I don't care what it's about, I'd go see it for the eye candy. Sweet, sweet eye candy. Mmmmmmmmm. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33060147/ns/entertainment-arts_books_more/)

The carpet, she is gone

I think I did more manual labour this weekend than I have in a long while. Friday night, 11pm, I fixed the inventory errors for work for an hour (it's the end of our financial year, we needed to make sure we could ship everthing possible). Saturday morning, bright & early, we started pulling up the carpet & padding in the front room, to prepare it for the laminate which will be installed next week. Who knew the contractors would use that many frakkin staples? And the dust under the padding was gross. Blech. Then we moved everything back into that room & started filling it up with furniture from the living room. Then my parents arrived on their way back home from the cottage, to stay with us for the night so they could visit Evie (first grandchild) before they went home. We told them in no uncertain terms that we had no intention of cooking dinner, so we went out instead. They left the next morning. Then we picked all the basil from our garden & made 6 cups worth of pesto - believe me that is a lot of pesto! Then we finished moving the furniture out of the living room (the couch is currently taking up residence in our eat-in kitchen - it just fits). Then we tore out the carpet & padding there (the cat puke stains from the gummi bear incident went right through to the wood underneath - who knew?). At last we are done with this stage of the renovations. The living room now contains a quarter of the furniture it did yesterday morning. Can't wait until we have to move the entertainment unit that weighs a ton (we don't have a flatscreen TV. Yet). So I am sore & feeling a sense of accomplishment. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to walk properly, and not like I have a stick up my bum.

I think I'm geeking out

No, I know I'm geeking out. Not many people know that I've wanted to be an archaeologist for as long as I can remember, but lots of people know that I'm a huge history geek, mostly Dark Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Anyhoo, it was announced today that a huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold & silver has been discovered in England by an amateur metal-detector person (not sure of the terminology there). Check out this story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffordshire/8272058.stm, it's pretty darn cool (ah, if I could only figure out how to add links in my posts). Now, if I could just find something that cool in my backyard.....

WE DID IT!

Andrew & I weren't able to attend the creditor's meeting yesterday but we had voted previously so that didn't matter. The vote was a resounding YES! to resurrect the agency! It still needs to go before court to be approved, that will happen next Tuesday, but hopefully we're back on the road to Wren! The vote was something like 248 to 20, with all of the non-family creditors voting in favour of the proposal. This was just the icing on a great weekend, and a great way to start the week. Baby girl, we're on our way!

Eastbound & down

Loaded up & truckin', we're gonna do the things that can't be done. We've got a long way to go & a short time to get there.... Sorry about that, got lost in a Smokey & the Bandit fog (at least, I think that song is from that movie, I probably have half the lyrics wrong). Anyhoo, we're heading off to parts eastward, to visit with my dad's side of the family for the weekend. On the way there we may stop for buttermilk pancakes in Coburg (at the Buttermilk Cafe - TO DIE FOR), and we will definitely stock up on garlic cheese curds (food of the gods - I kid you not) in Plainfield. There's a BBQ at my aunt's place on Saturday (my mom's birthday) and we're going out for dinner on Sunday to celebrate my mom's birthday. It'll be nice to get away. The meeting with the bankruptcy trustee (re: the proposal & whether it got enough votes to proceed) is on Monday, but we won't make it back in time to go. A couple of our friends are going & will report back to us with the (hopefully) good news. Fingers crossed! This wait is EXCRUCIATING (is that how you spell that. it looks wrong)(oh well, I'm too lazy to look it up)!

Have I told you how much I like goats?

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What a hoser

My boy, Andrew, is now a fully-fledged Canuck! We went to the ceremony this morning, it was quite touching, and I felt rather patriotic (Canada rocks!). Then we went straight to the passport office, where applying for his passport took Andrew all of 10 minutes, including the wait. It helped that he was so organized. In the same plaza there was a photo studio named Mehboob. I can assure you that many laughs were had at the expense of that name. You know what they say, don't touch mehboob.

On a stinkier note, Mr. Skunk traipsed through our yard again last night. Willow spotted him & started going nuts, so we went to look to see what she was reacting to. It Mr. Skunk, trundling through, looking like a black Y white pekinese type dog. Heh, so cute but so stinky.

Wild kingdom

NEWS FLASH.....The latest addition to the menagerie of beasts to roam our backyard is the skunk. That's right - the skunk. This morning marked our first sighting of a skunk in our natural habitat. I was eating my breakfast when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving in the backyard. It was lighter in colour than the usual raccoons, so I though maybe it was a cat, which we also sometimes see in our yard (not our cats, though, but neighbourhood cats). But no, as I looked more closely I saw it was a skunk. This is closest I've been to a skunk in the "wild". So, to tally up, this year we've had mice, raccoons, other people's cats, a squirrel or 2, and a skunk. I imagine the next animal we see might just be a deer, though I'm not sure how he'll get over the fence.

Too cute!

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I propose

So the proposal is done, and we've read it - it's a pretty dry read. Anyway, the long & the short of it is, if the proposal gets 2/3 of the votes from creditors it will go before the courts for approval. I don't see why it wouldn't get enough votes, but there's more than just adoptive families affected by this. So, if it passes the court approval stage the agency will be resurrected. The thing is, though, we'd need to put in a total of $4000 (each family) to cover operating costs, one lot in October or November, and another in February. Considering we'd only get back about $2000 or so if the bankruptcy proceeded that doesn't seem like a bad deal. Now we just need to find that $4000. We voted yes, by the way. I can't relax, though, until the proposal makes it through court.

In other news, Andrew's citizenship ceremony is next Tuesday, which is a lot quicker than we had thought it would be. How cool is that? This year continues to be a roller coaster of ups & downs.

I'm floored (or, I will be)

Let’s see, what’s been happening since the last time I posted? Well, early last week I was pretty bummed (okay, really bummed) to find out that I was not chosen to be one of the godparents of my niece, Evie. While it doesn’t bother me that my sister-in-law chose her sister instead, part of me still says, “hey! Why not me?”. I know my brother is just being who he is, which is someone who doesn’t necessarily always put his family first, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when he doesn’t even think to put me (and Andrew, frankly) for that kind of honour. He never sends me photos of my niece, I have to download them from Facebook (from my sister-in-law’s page). You’d think that he’d be stoked to send me pictures of his sweet daughter, but he doesn’t think like that. This coming weekend my parents are coming to visit us. They’re going straight to my brother’s place, then we’re going to meet up with them for a family dinner. Then we’re (my parents, Andrew & I) are bringing Evie home with us for the night (I think at my parent’s request – well, let’s face it, it was my mom’s request). Anyhoo, she’ll be sleeping with my folks in their room (it’s easier that way, cat-wise). So when my brother called to give me a heads up that this was happening (and to break my heart on the godparent front) he says, “we’ll see how it goes, if it goes well maybe she can stay with you again sometime”. What does he mean, IF it goes well? What does he think is going to happen? Does he think we’re going to feed her pizza, or go to a rave or something? Honestly, he just doesn’t think about what he’s saying sometimes. He is so condescending to me about the whole baby thing, like because I don’t have kids yet that I don’t know how to care for them. Dude, I was babysitting 1 year old twins before he was 10 years old. Twins! I know that was quite a while ago, but I think I can handle one baby (5 months old yesterday). Feh. I think you can tell he’s not in my good books right now. Inconsiderate tool.

Later in the week we formalized the quote to have laminate flooring installed on our main floor. We’ve changed the colour to Ancient Cypress (a warm, reddish colour) and decided that we will move all the furniture & pull up & dispose of the old carpet & laminate packaging to save money. That’s going to be a fun week. Chaos!!!! We hope to have it all done by the end of this month. We figure we’ll book one room for a Monday install (so we have the weekend to prepare that room), then book the other room for a Friday (to give us the rest of the week to ready that room), so Andrew doesn’t have to take 2 days off in a row. I’m looking forward to having everything done & back to normal.

This weekend we went to my parent’s place for a visit. It was pretty quiet, but nice. Mom & I went shopping & ended up with some real bargains (I scored a purple tank top with a very cool beaded neckline – I have the khaki version as well – for $10.00), and I fell in love with a long black “boyfriend” style cardigan. It’s knee-length & I love it & I went back & got it on Monday. You can’t say I didn’t think on it for a couple of days. At the grocery store where we did our weekly shop I saw a Dungeness crab with barnacles on its shell. As I watched the barnacle popped up to say hello. I almose barfed right there in front of the tank, then I hightailed it over to the meat section. I don’t know what it is about barnacles but they gross me out BIG TIME. It’s one of the few things that grosses me out. Weird, huh? Good thing I don’t run into them too often, living near freshwater waterways & all.

I guess that pretty much brings us up to date. We should hear about the proposal this week, or early next, and should be able to vote on it soon. Andrew got a reply from the ministry of child & youth services stating that if all goes well they hope the agency will be back up & running by October. It’s good to see that the ministry is optimistic, I think that is hugely important. Fingers crossed we’re still in this crazy adoption “race”!

That damned rabbit (tm)

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Just kidding, that's not the rabbit what ate our garden. He's brown.

Not much to blog about lately, I'll try to write more this afternoon.