Silly words from silly folks

Our Valentine’s day this year: 2 hours of packing, 3 hours with the movers followed by 6 hours of cleaning. How very romantic. At least we spent it together. While cleaning we reminisced and decided that our most romantic Valentine’s day we had was our first one, when we were 3000 miles apart. Jeff made me a website…it would be neat to compare that one to the ones he makes these days.

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!

….sorry for those coming to the blog to read about the new iPad….we were referring to our new house.  We flew to Kelowna for what was supposed to the day on Jan. 23 (has it really been that long since we last blogged???). We attempted to fly in the morning, but it was too foggy to land, so they flew us back to Calgary. Air Canada pleasantly surprised me and arranged a second flight that afternoon. Once we arrived in Kelowna and got all of our work done with the home inspector and walk through with the builder, it was too late to fly back so we stayed the night. I wasn’t disappointed that I had to stay in Kelowna as obviously I love it there. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to fly somewhere just for the day as I’ve never done that before.

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.

A wise man once said, “when the Sill’s put their mind to it they can really get stuff done”

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)

This has been a crazy week. We put our house up on MLS  and before we could even write a blog about it going on the market, it’s been sold!

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!

After working day in and day out over the holidays, we have now completely finished paint and we have finished the drywall in the basement. We had water in our basement a couple of times over the years whenever it rained a ton. Turns out it was due to the grade of our yard running towards the house. When we put our sprinklers in this spring we were able to change the grade and it stopped the leakage. Unfortunately this meant replacing some of the drywall downstairs. We got a quote for $700 and decided that we should try and do it ourselves and learn about drywall and save a few bucks. How hard could it be really?….turns out it was pretty fun but super dusty and tricky to get it perfect. Kudos to professional drywallers – it’s super tough to get it all smooth and not bubbly.

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

Given that our house is in shambles, we decided not to get a tree this year. I wanted one since it was the very first time in 12 years that I didn’t travel anywhere for Christmas (interestingly enough it’s the first time since I can remember that I also haven’t been sick over the holidays). We have enough lights and ornaments for a tree since I’ve been collecting them over the years and Jeff has gotten an ornament every Christmas from his Gramma so now he has 31! As a compromise, we decorated one of our plants. Looks kind of sad. Might have to get a tree next year since I’ve been doing some reading and it’s actually really good for the environment to get a Christmas tree. I was surprised to hear that. Here’s our Christmas plant:

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:

I joined club 3-0 last week. I’ve been told by the experienced 30-somethings that it’s like club med but instead of rides, med stands for the medications my aching joints will need (nice one Makar)!

For my birthday this year I got three awesome surprises -  lunch, 30 presents in a box and a guitar!!! Last year my friends at the university planned a surprise “Lindsay day” and we had a picnic lunch. “Apparently” I was fairly resistant to the whole thing and asked way too many questions and made the surprise difficult. However, this year, I didn’t notice a thing or question when Jana wanted to go for a walk to External Relations on campus (carrying what later was revealed to be an empty envelope), using that as a way to get me to the atrium for my surprise lunch. We even walked by the atrium and Jana said “oh, there’s Jeff” and I said “strange, I wonder who he’s having lunch with…”. So I have a couple theories: either I’m dumber than last year, or I’m more laid back. Let’s go with laid back We had soup, salad and sandwiches. Heather was even able to make it since she was in town for the holidays so that was a fun surprise.

Larry and Brenda were pretty clever this year. Must be all that time spent coming up with things to keep Sage and Conrad busy. They sent 30 presents that I had to open in sequential order. They were a trip down memory lane. They started with a bib for age one, shoe laces for age 5, keychain for 16, booze for 19. Each present had significance to a particular age. 28 represented our wedding and 29 our kitty.  Thirty presents are sure a lot to open so I must be old. Was really neat and very thoughtful – thanks L & B!

Jeff bought me an acoustic guitar. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play. I tried to learn once in university but then my roommate with the guitar moved out. Then I picked it up last Christmas in Kamloops with Larry. It just seems that every time I start to get the hang of it, I was time for me to surrender the borrowed guitar.

The first day was rough. I could practice for about 3 minutes before my fingers were bleeding. I really need to build up some calluses. In between home renos I’ve been practicing a bit more and toughening up my fingers so I can play for about an hour now. It doesn’t sound good by any means. I am a two hit wonder right now: This land is your land and Free Falling. I’m also working on Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. We bought a book and Jeff is also learning. Eventually we will buy an electric guitar and jam. For now, we’ll just work on our C chord.

Rock on.

We haven’t had much time lately for blogging since we are in the midst of painting our entire house. In the last few weeks we have painted everything. All we have left is the kitchen and the office. Then we will be ready to put it on the market and move…..

We have lived in Calgary for 7 years, and although it has been a good city for us, it is time for a change. Over the past year we’ve tossed around a few ideas: Europe, Australia, Ottawa, Victoria, Kelowna. In the end, we decided on the closest and least complicated city: Kelowna. We spent some time there this fall (as well as having both grown up near Kelowna) and loved it. The weather is so much nicer (pretty sure it’s not -30 degrees there right now) and gets nice and hot in the summer. The biggest selling features for Kelowna is that we both get to keep our jobs and work remotely, we can have a huge garden and grow more than just peas and zucchini and we can swim in fresh water every day! The plan is to move in the Spring (maybe just a coincidence but we should be there in time for the first tourney of the year Sunflicker

We will dearly miss our friends and family in Calgary but we will be back often for work and ultimate.

Willow is very confused by all of the painting but she was born in BC so she’s pretty excited to be moving back home. Here are a few pictures of her supervising. She has only managed to get into the paint once (that we know of)…and painted her tail red.

Supervising with taping

Supervising while Jeff pulls off a sketchy move

Helping paint the trim

Ever so helpful

Apart from painting, didn’t get up to much this weekend since it was way too cold to go anywhere. Went to my sister’s baby shower. She got so many cute pink things. She’s really getting big and the doctors have given her a window of January to February, so it’s hard to say when it will come since if it’s late it may be born in March. I’m hoping it comes early so I have more time to spend with the little girl before we move.

We were able to catch a bit of the Olympic trail’s speed skating at the Oval on Monday. We saw the men’s and ladies’ 1000m short track. It got me very excited for the Olympics. Go Canada!

Well, this past weekend (sunday) was my 31st birthday and with it brought the 4th annual treasure hunt. Lindsay really out did herself this year and has now claimed the title of Wife of the Year. Well, this years treasure hunt was completely different then anything previous and HIGH TECH!

Lindsay went out the day before and marked a bunch of locations on GPS and also hid a clue in the area. So when I got up in the morning Lindsay gave me the details of the hunt and the GPS. The instructions said to follow the clues and that food and drink were to be provided!

So off we went from our house walking with the GPS. The first stop was something like 1.5 km’s west…. and we hadn’t had breakfast yet (a must in the Sill household) so I figured we were off to Tim Horton’s for breakfast. I was close… McDonalds. There I found a clue under the golden arches which told me to collect my free sugar water coffee. And to continue onto clue #2. After a short breakfast at McDonalds (yes, I had breakfast at McDonalds but hey it’s my birthday….). Here’s a picture of me with my clue! (day 29 of the mustache looks pretty sweet huh!)

Anyway, next stop was Tim Hortons (where I was suppose to have breakfast) here I got clue #3 . The clue told me to take the c-train to Dalhousie. There I found my way to Chapters and found the clue which said I’d get the book “the purple cow”. Back on the c-train and down to Kensington. There, I found a barber shop where the clue told me Terri was going to donate for my mustache and I’d get present #1 (more about el mustacho later).

From there we went to Riley park to find out I was getting a disc golf stool. very cool! Next stop the zoo. There I had to lurk in the bushes to find a clue which told me I would get a disc golf disc of my choice. The final stop was back to our house for the Treasure! The grand prize was some really nice Cologne… oh and prize #1…. a Mach 3 razor.

As for the mustache and Movember. I was able to raise a grand total of $526!!!!! Thanks to everyone who donated. I was amazed at the number of people who donated so thank you to everyone. I shaved the caterpillar (as Doug calls it) on Tuesday morning. Here are the before and after pictures. Unfortunately, my license ran out and I didn’t get it on my drivers license as I went on the 2nd. Looking back I wish I had because they have the same rules as the passport office that you can’t smile or have your glasses on…. nothing about a mustache though. So maybe again in 5 years… or sooner.

First off, as promised in the last post, my sister and Matt are having a (drumroll please) baby girl! They’ve picked out a cute little name and I can’t wait to start buying little pink things. I went to the ultrasound and the 3D technology was very impressive.

We went to see Mayson and Carly’s new arrival today. They had a baby girl in October and named her Lindsay (after Carly’s cousin, not yours truly). She is super cute and very well behaved — given her name that may all change very rapidly . Jeff and I held her and I think I need to hit the gym since my arm was shockingly sore. Here we are with the happy family:

I spent the past week in Portland at Supercomputing. Yes, it is exactly as it sounds. All of the world’s nerds gathered at one location at once: Nerdvana. 12,000 nerds precisely. I spent my days in the Canadian booth playing air hockey with random stopper-byers and talked about high performance computing. The evenings were spent at vendor parties. I heard it wasn’t as good as past years but I’d be hard pressed to complain and it was impossible to tell there is a recession going on. Al Gore gave the keynote speech on Thursday. I was pleasantly surprised that my exhibitor pass got me in to see him. He was  predictable, lots of talk of climate change and the disastrous state of the world, but he was funnier than expected (global issues aside).

He influenced me to offset my carbon from my flight down to Portland:

I had never spent much time in Portland before this. The city is full of nice old buildings and great shopping (no tax!) and autumn is a great time to visit with the temperate climate combined with colorful leaves. I had no idea Portland has the highest vagrancy rate in the US. Hopefully the conference helped as it brings an average of $13M of revenue to the host city.

One random story from Portland. I had the luxury of having a glass of water beside my bed. At home this is not possible without paws in there knocking the glass over. I woke up in the middle of the night (dehydrated – see note above about vendor parties) and reached for my glass of water. Turns out I must have been sleeping on my arm and it was numb. As I was raising the glass to my mouth, my arm lost all feeling and I was unable to keep the glass upright and proceeded to uncontrollably pour the water all over the bed.

It is nice to go away, but it’s always nice to come home. Had a great weekend with Jeff and Willow. We watched movies, went to Aubree’s housewarming party, finally checked out the new Crossiron Mills mall (great work Sharma- it’s awesome), visited with Mayson and Carly and played some squash.

ps. Happy Belated birthday dad!

pps. Jeff’s mustache is really coming along: