Willow has definitely settled in nicely. She had a rough start getting used to a new house and longing for her boyfriend. But I’d say she looks pretty relaxed now.

Here is a picture of the cutie:

Expected more….like beer or lobster, but was nice to try oysters again since my first experience in Hawaii with them wasn’t so great. Maybe I just like Atlantic oysters.

Friday I think was the first rainy day and it rained ALL day. We watched the men’s semifinal hockey game downtown in a crowd in Robson square. We only lasted one period and were soaked (with rain, and probably sweat from the last 3 stressful minutes of the game) and decided to head to a house party. On the way we got distracted by a warm sushi restaurant with a big tv and beer…so it was an obvious choice and a great place to see Canada pull off a win, by the skin of their teeth, against Slovakia.

Saturday we checked out the cauldron and the German House. Was fun to just wander the streets with thousands of other tourists. I feel like we managed to see a lot in a short period of time. We even caught a pirate protest.

We made it back to Kelowna in time to play indoor ultimate. It’s at a new indoor facility 5 minutes from our house on turf! The level of play was really good. Went out for beers with a few folks after (trying to find a league team

Spent today the same as the rest of Canada…watching the best hockey game ever! I’m hoping that after this game people stop talking about the 2002 gold medal game. I was in Guatemala at the time and spent an entire day walking around the small town I was in looking for the game. No dice…just lots of laughs from people asking me if I was Canadian. I’m just glad I caught this game. It was amazing! The closing ceremonies were quite good but I think it’s only a result of such a good Olympics and wonderful stories along the way. Luckily we got our cable hooked up just in time so I caught most of our victories but it was nice to relive them tonight. The highlight for me was Avril Lavigne’s performance. The Japanese were going crazy during her show. It reminded me of our trip to Japan where girls there are fanatically for Avril with her name spewed all over their t-shirts and backpacks.

Jeff and I were trying to guess the next artist. I really thought it would be Celine, but she never appeared. Being the geek that I am, I immediately Googled “why didn’t Celine show up to the Olympics?”. Some of the hits I got were quite funny “her ego wouldn’t fit in the arena” or “she got stuck in a very long poutine line up”….but then I felt bad for laughing once I found out the real reason – she’s trying to procreate. We were wrong on all of our guesses….in terms of why she wasn’t there as well as who the next artist would be.

I am so very sad the Olympics are over. The only good thing about it is that now we can get some much needed things done around the house. Here’s some photos of our trip to Olympics 2010:

Watching hockey in rainy Robson square

A Dylan sandwich at the harbour front

While I’m in the process of uploading photos from my iPhone, I thought I’d post a few more. They aren’t the best quality in general, but these ones turned out better than I expected:

One of the short moments when Willow wasn't crying on the drive

I took this photo a few weeks back in Lethbridge. It’s a sundog, which is an aura rainbow effect around the sun caused by ice crystal reflections.

Jeff, Willow and I moved in with the KD family (Jill and Mark) for a few days between possession dates. Willow was in heaven with her boyfriend and her parents all in one house. I headed up to Edmonton for work with Jill and it turns out Mark was up there for work as well, so Jeff and the kitties had the place to themselves. Slightly stressful trip as between work meetings I was answering calls from our lawyers. The best one I got was “if you don’t call me back in 5 minutes your deal will fall through”. That’s a nice message. Not much communication since but I assume all is well since we are living here…

We arrived safely in Kelowna after what seemed like a very long drive. Normally 7 hours in the car isn’t so bad but this time we had a crying cat the ENTIRE way! She really doesn’t like when the car goes over 100km/hr. It must make a vibration or noise that only she can hear. The drive, as long as it seemed, was worth it. Our house was even nicer to arrive to than I remembered. And Willow is settling in nicely after a few rough days of getting her bearings.

It has been an adventure trying to get unpacked and settled. We now have 4 of our 5 appliances working and we have internet, cable and a landline!

Pictures of the new place coming soon!

It was a fruitful trip as we were able to remove all the conditions. Alas, here are pictures of our new place, now that it’s official: http://www.caseydarke.com/Kelowna/British_Columbia/Homes/9221826/Upper_Mission/Agent/Listing_2224353.html

We can hardly wait to move. Time is flying by though as we’ve both been really busy at work as well as prepping for the move. Picking out appliances consumed a ton of our time. After way too many hours of reading consumer reports and talking to salesmen, we chose a Miele dishwasher (only uses 4 gallons of water / load), a Kenmore Elite fridge (with ice and water for Jeff), an Electrolux stove (gas! also for Jeff), and Samsung steam washer and dryer. Out of all the appliances I’m most impressed with how far dishwashers have come. We might be able to actually be in the same room as the dishwasher and have a conversation without yelling.

We bought from Sears and Coast Wholesale Appliances as they had the best prices. Coast was about 10% cheaper than anywhere else. Since we are having them all shipped to BC we had to pay PST, except on energy star washers or fridges…they are PST exempt, which is a good little factoid to anyone planning to move to join us in Kelowna!

Good news to all of our friends here in Calgary – we’ve decided to hire movers so we no longer need your muscles. Thanks anyways if you’ve offered! They are coming for everything on the 14th and delivering it to Kelowna on the 17th. I have a few work obligations so we will be driving out on the 19th. It is quickly becoming a reality and we will miss everyone! If you didn’t hear already (sorry), Jill and Mark have graciously offered to host a going away party for us tonight so give me a shout and I’ll give you their address. We’d love to see you. Or we’re around for the next 2 weeks and will most likely be coming back to Calgary often for work and to visit my sister’s baby. She is due any day and is huge! Feel free to comment if you have any tips on inducing labour as I’d love for her to have it while I’m still living here and I know she’s ready.

We had a nice visit with my dad and Susan this weekend. We went for Chinese food at the Silver Inn. The good news was that we didn’t discover an amazing restaurant right before moving. We got a few games of uker in (of which Susan and Jeff managed to survive and beat the two most competitive people ever. Next time me and my dad should be on separate teams to make it more enjoyable for everyone).

Ok. Enough blogging. Time to get on with some packing and put our party shoes on.

Well, that stuff done has been “prepping, selling and buying a house.” The past 2 weeks we’ve listed a house, sold a house, gone snowboarding for 2-days and bought another house. It feels like things are happening so fast that someone hit fast-forward on the cassette deck. (I used cassette deck because we found some great cassette’s while cleaning out the house… just a sample of the bands…. “house of pain”, “Beattles”, “Huewy Lewis and the news”, “yes”, “meat loaf”, “learn spanish”, etc…). Lindsay even found a palm reading that someone recorded onto a tape for her….

Anyway, to recap the last week… Friday the house was conditionally sold. Sunday we flew to Kamloops and had a wonderful few days with the whole Sill family on Sun Peaks at a ski-in and ski-out condo. The whole family was there including my parents and my brother his wife and their two kids (our niece and nephew (why isn’t it spelt nefew?)), Sage and Conrad. They’re at such a cute age right now and the weekend even included a fun scavenger hunt around the condo. Sage even managed to find $0.75 that wasn’t part of the scavenger hunt (imagine finding that much money when you’re 4!) It’s also so fun to watch what they learn over just 2 days… by the last day Conrad was pulling people downstairs to take him in to the hot-tub. When we finally figured out he wanted in the hot tub he ripped his pants off faster than a stripper (I kid you not). (I wonder if that’s an acceptable metaphor?)

From Sun Peaks we were off to Kelowna… We looked at houses for about 3 hours on Thursday night… then ALL day on Friday from 9:30 – 6pm. All-in-all I would estimate we saw 20-25 houses… by the end we’d walk in, look at the backyard, kitchen and say nope. next. But in the end we found a great place (some people add extra letters and call it a Palace but whatever). No pics as of yet because we’re still working on all the conditions of the sale but if all goes smoothly we’ll be moving in on the 17th of February.

Oh and count this as the first shout out for moving help. I filled out some online forms and after a Gazillion (yes, a Gazillion) estimates getting someone to move you is EXPENSIVE and bribing your friends with free pizza, beer and a sober chaufeur in Canada’s wine country is much MUCH cheaper…

Ok that’s all for now but once it’s finalized we’ll post pictures and open our guest booking calendar. It’s already booking fast for the Kelowna ulti tournament.

(fyi…that wise man was myself)

It got listed on Wednesday at 11am and by noon we had 5 showings booked. I was off to Edmonton for work so Jeff stayed at work until 9pm since showings were going on and he couldn’t go home. We had 5 or 6 showings on Thursday, including 2 repeat visits. I arrived back from Edm at 7pm and all I wanted to do was go home, but couldn’t. Friday morning we got our first offer and countered. Five more showings on Friday. On Friday night we waited patiently while two competing offers were being submitted. That definitely worked to our advantage and we accepted one of the offers (slightly above the asking price) on Friday evening. Our house was officially conditionally sold today at 11:22am. Their possession date is February 15th so looks like things will be moving a bit faster than we originally thought. We even pushed back from their original possession date of Feb. 1st.

We made a bet after meeting our realtor for the first time that whoever could pick the date closest to the conditionally sold date. The winner gets dinner cooked for them in the new house. I picked January 21st and Jeff picked January 19th….Jeff, how do you like your steak?

Clearly we were both surprised when it sold this fast.

We are now off to Kamloops for a ski vacation at Sun Peaks and will be stopping in Kelowna to look at houses. At first we thought we would be just looking but I guess now we can actually buy something!

When we tore down the wall (I wanted to use a sledgehammer but Jeff suggested doing it the proper (boring) way using a utility knife), we luckily discovered that only the bottom of each drywall sheet was damaged by water and that the frame and insulation were dry and clean. Phewf. Framing and insulating would have been a bit more challenging. I’ll note that all of our know-how was coming from a very helpful chap named Jim from Home Depot and a Home Depot do it yourself book. We bought all the supplies they suggested and $6 worth of scrap drywall. I may have mis-measured a section and messed up some sheets and ran out of drywall. Jill and Mark happened to have the perfect sized replacement piece and saved us – thanks guys!

Jeff was a pro-star. He was super fast and was the foreman on the project and answered all my questions even though it was the blind leading the blind. I was VERY slow and meticulous. If I got paid by the job I might be in the poor house.

I was so proud of us. It looks awesome. Funny that we finished and had a look around at the rest of the basement and was able to notice major flaws in somebody else’s work that we never noticed before. All in all I think we made the right choice. It took us a few days to do and cost $150 in tools.

Jeff put the icing on the cake by laying anti-fatigue flooring to warm up the basement and make it look more cozy. I just wish we did this years ago.

Here are some pics:

Screwed up the dry wall and taped;)

Supervision was in full force as usual

Finished product

Check out the smooth wall

I definitely got spoiled. I got a squash bag, a spa gift certificate to River’s bend in Calgary, some clothes and lovely charger plates and napkin rings to go with our China:

It was the year of the bag. I asked for 3 types of bags and got all 3: a Lug bag from my parents that work work perfectly as a laptop bag, a disc golf bag and the squash bag.

We had my sister and boyfriend Matt over on Christmas day. We visited and exchanged gifts then were later joined by Mark (from ultimate) and Rob (co-worker). Jeff did a great job on dinner and everything was cooked to perfection:

Jeff about to put the bird in the oven

We were both a bit nervous since it’s been a while since we cooked turkey and we bought a 17lb bird (afterall, my sister is eating for two) but it worked out. At least I wasn’t sick the next day…not sure about the others We spent the evening playing Jenga Max and Croquignole….well maybe everyone else was playing Croquignole as I’m not sure what you’d call the game that Mark and I played. It certainly wasn’t Croquignole since the object of our game was clearly to hit the wooden posts as many times as possible….we’ll have to quite playing Bridge so much and practice up our Croquignole skills for next time.  The truth is that Mark was pretty good and he got the short straw when he landed me as a partner –I’ve never had “good luck” at Croquignole. A little factoid…Jeff and I have played over 100 games each of crib and Croquignole. My record is 0-100 for Croquignole and 99-1 for cribbage. Must be different parts of the brain used for each game.

Mark and I learning from the experts

Over the course of the evening Matt taught us more than we ever wanted to know about boa constrictors (still having nightmares, thanks Matt) and Rob taught us about Pigeon Racing and showed us that my guitar actually isn’t broken and has the potential to sound very nice.

All in all a very nice Christmas. I’m glad we stayed in Calgary although we missed our families. Nice that we got to have Xmas with my sis though and didn’t have to travel. Here’s Willow enjoying her Christmas present since a Christmas blog wouldn’t be complete without a picture of our most spoiled family member and arguably the cutest member: