Yesterday evening, we went to check it out.

The mosquitos this year are INSANE. I’m not a huge fan of bug spray, but deemed it necessary.

These suckers are relentless.

There is a splash park right next to the regular park, but since it was hovering around 20/68 degrees, we thought it would be better to wait on the splash park until a hotter afternoon.

There was a little complaining, but within minutes of playing on the non-splash park, the girls didn’t mention it again.

There’s an amazing climbing tree in our front yard that my 10-year-old self would LOVE.

I promised the kids that we’d try to get to the splash park in the next couple days. This morning though, when we checked the weather, it called for thunder storms, not sun.

That’s okay though. I love thunder storms.

Noah took the girls out to the back yard in the morning, before it got all stormy and wet. I had a list of things I still wanted for the house, so we went and did that this afternoon. It started raining around 3:30 and only lasted about 15 minutes. Saskatchewan takes it’s rain very seriously though, as there was water everywhere.

When we were at Indigo, I went into Starbucks. As I was waiting in line, I saw something I’d never seen in a Starbucks before.

Stroopwafels!

Yum.

Liliana was sporting one of the pairs of shoes she got for her birthday. I’m kind of envious of her small shoe collection. Her awesome aunts have great taste. If I’m not mistaken, her skinny jeans are also a gift from an aunt of hers.

We were out for over four hours and the girls did amazing. I was quite impressed with them. Our last stop was the mall. The girls are seriously lacking in non-winter pajamas and The Children’s Place had a 50% off sale, so they each scored a couple pairs.

See the boxes and stuff in the background? The only room I’ve completely unpacked is the bathroom. Ugh.

I’m hoping for some hot sunny days soon so we can get to the splash park or try out our sprinkler, but if we don’t get them, at least I have an excuse to unpack, right?

You’d think.

We’re all moved in.

Noah and my in-laws arrived in Regina bright and early Saturday morning. Just 7 hours later, we finished unloading at the Saskatoon house. I was quite surprised at how quickly we did it. I had everything mostly packed, I just hadn’t touched the kitchen yet. I lost two night of packing to our power being out.

Thunderstorms = AWESOME. Power outages = NOT AWESOME.

I unpacked as much as I could at the new house on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, as my living room looked like this:

Liliana was quite confused with the whole moving thing – even more so when we explained to her that she now has her own room and no longer shares with Kaylie. Add to that, we took the bunk beds apart and, because of the size of the rooms and beds, gave Liliana Kaylie’s single top-bunk bed and Kaylie Liliana’s full-size bottom-bunk bed. I’m sure Lili will get used to it though. Since her bed has rails all around it, she’s calling it her “puppy bed”. (She’s been a “puppy” for the last month or so. Her knees and shins are covered in bruises from crawling around.)

The girls and I came back to Regina on Sunday night, as I had to work until the 30th and Kaylie had a couple more soccer games. We camped out in an empty apartment, using only what fit in our car when we returned to Saskatoon for good on Wednesday evening.

On our way back to Regina on Sunday night, we saw the most amazing rainbows.

Compared to the real thing, the photos are quite horrible and lame (add to that, they were taken with my phone).

Quite a few of my Saskatchewan friends think I’m insane for loving the prairies so much when they long for the mountains, but you cannot see an ENTIRE rainbow when you’re in the mountians. I didn’t get a shot of the entire rainbow, as when we could see it, I didn’t feel safe pulling over to take the shot because it was raining pretty good and I didn’t want to get hit. Saskatchewan people drive in rain about as well as Texans drive in snow. I don’t trust them.

(Side note: Liliana is TERRIFIED of rain. It reminds her of the car wash. During one of the storms last week, we ran from the car to our door as quickly as we could and Liliana screamed her terrified scream the entire 10 seconds – and a couple minutes afterward.)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rainbow like it though.

We also saw a double/inverted rainbow. It almost looked like a mirror image.

Can you see the second part of it? It’s kind of faint.

You miss a lot when you’re surrounded by mountains. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of these beautiful prairies. I love the storms. I love the rainbows. I love the fact that I can see for miles and miles. I love the amount of SKY that I can see. I love that I can drive from Point A to Point B in a straight line.

The mountains are beautiful and majestic, yes, but I spent 25 years living in them. When I go back to my hometown, I feel claustrophobic.

This move is different than any other move I’ve done. Before this one, each move I’ve done has either been within a city, or to a new province. I’ve never done one within the same province. I much prefer it this way, as getting it all done in one day is pretty awesome.

Another thing that’s different is that here, I know nobody. (Besides my in-laws. They’re SO happy to have us living so close, right guys? Did we mention that we’re dropping the kids off later today and not picking them up for a week?) When we moved to Regina, there were a couple awesome bloggers I’d been in contact with. Each one of them turned into a real-life friend.

Here, I know no bloggers. Not one.

Blogger friends differ from non-blogger friends in one big way – photos. Non-blogger friends seem to think that their blogger friends are a bit nutso with all the photos they take and WHY WON’T YOU PUT YOUR CAMERA DOWN, YOU WEIRDO.

Bloggers like to take photos of their weirdo friends.

I’m sure we’ll meet people, I’m not too worried about it.

The day before we left Regina, I made sure to get the girls in the pool. We’re going to miss having a pool in our back yard.

Pool Time was cut a bit short by SOMEONE who decided that if everything didn’t go her way, she would SCREAM. I tried to keep that SOMEONE from ruining it for her big sister as long as I could before I had to take her inside to save everyone else from their ears bleeding.

Tantrums are fun.

I spent the majority of Tuesday night cleaning the mostly empty apartment. I lasted until 3am before I said FORGET IT and went to bed. We packed up the car on Wednesday morning with everything that was left, went to work/daycare, then hit the road to Saskatoon.

I’d been watching Friends from the beginning as I was packing these last couple weeks, and Tuesday night I watched the series finale. It was kind of surreal watching the last scene pan Monica’s empty apartment as I was sitting in my own empty apartment. (Hers was bigger.)

I’m kind of glad that we’re finally here. I’ve traveled Highway 11 between Regina and Saskatoon 7+ times in the last month and I’m about done with it.

I start my (AWESOME) new job next Thursday and am only working two days a week for now. I’m SO excited to be spending the majority of my time outside with the girls instead of inside an office. I’m looking forward to spending the summer in our back yard, the splash park down the street, and any other OUTSIDE place we discover.

Speaking of discovering places, I need to discover where the grocery store is. I’m hungry.

I think we’re going to like it here.

So. Last weekend my parents arrived here in Regina on Thursday at midnight and spent Friday at Kaylie’s school for their annual Grandparents Day. Kaylie was stoked to have Grannie and Pappa here and was even more stoked to stay with them in their hotel room. (I don’t allow parents in my house.) (Okay, actually, we live in a 2 bedroom apartment and Erica is already staying with us and to have 7 people sharing 860 square feet and 1 bathroom would just be WRONG.)

On Saturday morning, we all met up to go geocaching. I’d never done it before, but my parents are hardcore into it and wanted to show us what it was all about.

We got a little tutorial on what we were supposed to do and what we were supposed to find.

And then we were off.

My dad was the expert finder person. I think we found seven geocaches in all the whole day, and five of them were found by my dad.

The girls were super interested in what was in the caches.

My dad was super surprised that we have the same kind of flowers in Saskatchewan as they have in BC.

Dad jokes.

“Pappa? Can you carry you me?”

(No, that’s not a typo. She used to say “Can I carry you me?”, so we’re improving.)

There are a lot of TREES involved in this geocaching thing.

It always pays off.

With this particular geocache, the girls got to take something out of the box because we put something in the box. I’m not real clear on the rules, but my mom knows them and she was running things, so it was all ok.

We signed the log book of each cache and noticed that we were following someone. Most of the ones we found had the same person listed to have been there moments before us.

Apparently there is more than one type of geocache. The one above is, if I remember right, a “mini cache”. The others we’d found before this were “small caches”.

This one is a “nano cache”. (Did I get that right, Mom?) The parents said that this was the first nano cache that they’d ever found.

The first part of the day we spent just walking from cache to cache. After lunch, we brought the stroller for Liliana and Kaylie rode her bike. We didn’t want to get stuck with two exhausted kids begging to be carried. Also, Kaylie loves riding her bike, so it worked out great.

Most of the contents of the boxes were little trinkets, like you’d find in a Kinder Surprise or something like that.

A ladybug decided to rest on Erica’s leg.

This one was by far the hardest one to find. It was a brilliant hiding spot.

The little caches just had a log book or sheet inside.

Liliana’s hair made me laugh. It kept reminding me of Weird Al.

We were out in the sun all day long and it was WONDERFUL. I’m really loving this almostsummer part of the year. (Hi Suzy!)

We had a great weekend with the parents and the only thing bad about it was that it was followed, once again, by Monday.

Speaking of Mondays, I have this next one off. Because it’s MAY LONG. This May Long I have super grand plans. Super grand plans of POTTY TRAINING. I’d planned about a month ago to do it this weekend as it’s the only weekend where we have nothing going on. Then I read this post about the Steece Quads and thought surely if they can potty train FOUR kids in three days, then surely I can do ONE, right? I’m going to use the 3 Day technique and completely kick diapers to the curb. I anticipate a few tears and tantrums. And some from Liliana as well.

Should be a blast.

Something about this.

You’re welcome.

We had thought about my joining them yesterday, but logistically, it didn’t make much sense. Plus, I needed some time at home. Today is my first day off after working 19 days straight, and if I’d gone to join my family (being a one vehicle family, I’d have had to take the bus), I wouldn’t have had time at home to prepare for the week (laundry! groceries! cleaning the bathroom! doing all the other bazillion things I haven’t had time to do while working 40+ hours a week!) I’ve talked to Noah quite a few times over the weekend, and he and the girls are having a great time in Manitoba with his parents and grandma. They’re being very well taken care of. (Like I knew they would be.) The thing I was most concerned about was Noah driving by himself with the girls. When we go away, I’m always the long-distance driver and he’s the city driver. He hates long-distance driving (and I like it), and he’s the better city driver (I’m getting better). I was also concerned about the roads, as it is WINTER here right now. I prayed through their entire journey. Noah did just fine on the way there, and I’m sure that, God willing, he’ll do just fine on the way home again.

So what am I thankful for? First off, I’m thankful for you guys. My readers. My friend/family. My encouragers. Thank you for the kind words that you’ve used to comment on my often recently heavy posts. I really appreciate you guys, and you sure know how to make a girl’s day bright.

This weekend, I’m thankful for alone time. By the time my family comes home, I’ll have had just over 48 hours of alone time. It is the longest I’ve been home alone in the last 8.5 years. Actually, I think it’s the longest I’ve been home alone ever. It’s weird. I went to bed on Saturday night just before midnight, but was not able to fall asleep until 3am. The dark and me? We don’t get along so well. It’s been weird to come home after work and not have anyone yell, “MAMEE’S HOME!” I kind of miss that. I haven’t gotten anyone to check on before I go to bed. I haven’t gone into the girl’s room at all.

But, being home alone has it’s benefits – like when I leave something somewhere, it stays there until I move it. I can leave something on the table in the living room and not have to worry about little hands touching it in the morning. I can nap! I had a 4.5 hour nap on Sunday after work. It was wonderful. I took an extra shift at work on Saturday, because what else was I going to do?! (My boss said that she liked my family-less availability.)

I’m thankful for many other things like my (extended) family, my friends, and especially my God – and the many gifts that He has given me. The gift(s) I’m most thankful for?

This guy.

This girl.

And this girl.

These last couple days of bachelorhood have been pretty great, and much needed, but my life with my family is so much more rich and fun and LOUD. I miss those three and look forward to having them home later today.

I hope you all had (or are having) a great weekend. HAPPY (CANADIAN) THANKSGIVING!!

Besides not blogging myself, I haven’t been reading any blogs. I just haven’t had the time! But I miss it! I missed big events. Elizabeth had her baby!! There are probably more things that I’ve missed, but there are still 209 posts in my reader, so obviously I’m not caught up yet.

It’s been kind of nice living in “real life” though. Anna didn’t make it to the Bible study we both attend on Thursday mornings, so we got together Friday morning. And afternoon. Our three little blond kids got along better than I expected. (Liliana doesn’t usually like other human beings.)

Time just kind of flew and before we knew it, it was almost 1:00pm, and I was supposed to pick up my race package with Kami for the CIBC Run for the Cure on Sunday.

Since Anna and Kami hadn’t seen each other for a few months, Anna suggested that I leave Liliana with her, get my race package, and then meet back at her place with Kami so we could all have coffee together. It was an awesome idea. I really enjoy those two ladies.

Photo by Kamden

(Yes, ladies, I’m emailing you the photos right away. Feel free to steal this one if you want, because I take forever to do things. I give the two of you permission.)

***
Saturday was a rough day for me. It was one of those days. I struggled to smile through work, but when I got home, I completely crashed. Thankfully, I’ve got a very forgiving, laid-back, hard-working husband who did dinner with the kids so that I could have some down time after work. He even did the bedtime routine with them and put them to bed.

Saturday night we were going to catch up on some DVR’d shows from the week when Noah noticed that we had water coming through our ceiling in the kitchen. Awesome.

We’ve been told before that we pay more for rent than we should for a two-bedroom apartment, but consider this. In the first place we lived after we were married, our rent, including utilities, was almost $200 less than we’re paying now. It had one more bedroom, more square feet, a HUGE back yard, it was the top half of a house, and we had (shared) laundry in the basement. BUT, it took a year and a day for our landlord to come and fix anything, unless it was on fire. Literally. (It only happened once, and it was the oven – wiring, not my fault.) There were things that the landlord PROMISED would be done before we moved in, and they were still not done when we moved out almost three years later.

Our apartment, while small, has nothing wrong with it. Our suite, and the building itself, is very well maintained, as is the surrounding area – including a huge field and an outdoor swimming pool. And when something goes wrong, they deal with it right away.

When we noticed the water leaking, Noah started cleaning it up while I got ahold of the after-hours service for the company that owns our building. We had someone at our house within half an hour. It was 10:30pm. THAT, my friends, is good service.

It turned out that the people in the unit above us had left their dishwasher on and it was one of those ones that plugged into the sink. The problem was, that they left the plug in the sink. Again, awesome.

***
Sunday morning I discovered that my new cell phone’s alarm clock tool was a little more complicated than I thought, because I set it for 7:00am, but did not wake up until 8:13am when my bladder was threatening to implode. I had to be at a staff meeting at 8:30am, Kami was picking me up from there to go to the Run for the Cure, and then she was dropping me back off for my 11:30am shift. Awesome.

I grabbed everything for my run and for work, and headed for my breakfast staff meeting. Thankfully, I didn’t forget anything. But, as I sat down for the meeting, I realized that I’d put my watch on upside down. Mornings are not my thing.

Kami and I got to the race starting line a little early and danced around to the beat of the drum (literally) to keep warm until the race started. We (Kami) decided that we should run the entire thing without stopping. She is my coach, supporter, encourager, and challenger. We did it. I tried not to let the fact that a lot of people were passing us at the beginning get to me. I forgot all about it when we crossed the finish line of our 5k run with a time of 32:22 – my personal 5k record.

When I got off work that night, I could hardly move. My legs had reached their limit and Noah spent the rest of the evening referring to me as an old lady because of how I was walking.

***
Noah and the girls are heading to Manitoba this weekend to join his parents at his grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. Since I work all weekend, I was going to stay home alone. By the time Monday hits, I will have worked nineteen (19!) days straight. I was looking forward to a day off (finally!) and getting the house back together.

The thing is, my husband kind of likes me and apparently wants me to join him and the girls for Thanksgiving. I can see his point. So, my plan for the next couple days consists of getting all the laundry washed, dried, folded, and put away (to me, those are four SEPARATE chores), replacing the sandals basket with the hats and mitts basket in the front closet, getting our winter gear out of storage, cleaning all the summer and too small clothes out of the girls’ closets, and finishing the editing for the photo shoots I’ve done recently. I’m thinking it’s going to take a lot of time, and therefore I may be absent on this blog AGAIN this week. Please forgive me if I’m absent in your comments as well.

It’s not you, it’s me.

And I really mean that!

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According to Google Maps, the trip was 4797 km.

I had written notes in my cell of things that I didn’t want to forget. I had to delete all my text messages a couple times, since my memory card thinger is so small. I always made sure not to delete my drafts though, since that’s where my notes were. When I got home, my card was full again. Apparently the two hours of sleep I’d gotten the night before fried my brain because I deleted the drafts with my inbox and outbox. DANG! I may or may not have been a little angry when I realized what I’d done.

Oh well. Here goes.

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Saturday, May 30th
Regina to Calgary: 755 km
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After the debacle with the battery, we finally took off at about 8:45 am. I wrote a bit about our first day already, but now here’s the photos!

We met up with Colin & Ashley (Kaylie’s biological dad and his girlfriend) and had dinner and then watched the kids in the pool. I’d called them earlier to let them know to bring suits if they wanted to go in, but I forgot one little detail.

Colin had broken his ankle in two places playing baseball a couple days earlier. I knew about it, but had forgotten. Whoops! So just the kids went in until just after Colin and Ashley left when Liliana did her first poop-in-the-pool stunt of the trip. Since there was nobody else there, I put on my suit and joined the girls after depoopifying Liliana.

It was my first full day without a computer, so when I talked to Noah later that night I got him to read me my blog comments and Facebook messages. I’m nerdy like that. Or I’m an addict or something. Who knows. After I got off the phone with him, I headed downstairs to see if they had one of those business centre things where I could use a computer. They did! I had exactly 15 minutes and pounded out this post in 13.5 minutes. That night was the best sleep I had the entire trip, as it was the only night that I didn’t sleep with Little Miss Kicky McKickerson.

Two of the chairs in our room pushed together made the perfect bed for her. (Oh wait! I lied! I got to sleep in a bed by myself at Amanda’s too. Ah, bliss.)

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Sunday, May 31st
Calgary to Summerland: 653 km
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I had everyone bathed and everything packed up the night before so that we could get going bright and early. We were on the road by 8:00 am (Alberta time) exactly. I like an early start. I had packed a bunch of fruit and baking in the cooler, so we didn’t have to stop anywhere for breakfast. I’m a very efficient traveler, and the only time we got out of the van was when we got gas. The kids were really well behaved though. Snacks, a DVD player and a bazillion movies will do that.

We got to Amanda’s at about 3 pm (BC time) and hung out for a couple hours before heading to the beach for a barbeque. I totally love her. She was a great hostess, and our kids totally got along. And by “our kids”, I mean Avelyn and Kaylie. Avelyn totally loved having a big kid around, and Kaylie gets along quite well with kids younger than her. Liliana and Avelyn were another story. They are SO alike, that they kind of clashed. I had a hard time stopping myself from laughing at how similar they are.

Liliana was stoked to be around all the “rrrrrrocks” and the “waller”. She spent most of her time in the lake collecting rocks. The kid was diiiiiiiirty when we finally got back to Amanda’s place.

I got to meet Angella for the first time. I loved it. (And apparently she liked me too.) Apparently we both thrive on words of affirmation, so reading a post ALL ABOUT ME was pretty awesome. Wouldn’t you love reading a post all about how someone thinks you’re awesome? Yea, me too.

Meeting her kids was great and weird, because it’s like, Hey! I’ve seen photos of you since you were just wee! I think they were a little surprised that some strange lady knew their names. Ah, the life of lucky little blogger children.

Kaylie and Graham hit it off, and so did Liliana and Emily (see photos here). Kaylie was pretty much in Kaylie-heaven, because she had so many kids to play with. She is a hardcore socializer, and the two days of traveling were hard on her.

She also got to see her cousins, Eva and Kaitlyn.

Isn’t she a gem? It was so weird to see her walking. She’s the youngest cousin, and it’s strange that she’s not a little baby anymore.

I absolutely love seeing Nick & Teresa.

They are definitely two of my favorite people, which is a huge change from how Nick and I grew up, because we were pretty volatile. Now though? He’s pretty stellar. As is his wife. I really wish that we lived closer to them so that we could spend more time with them. Hey Noah, wanna move to Vancouver? No? I tried!

It was a blast to see all the kids interact with each other. There was so much to do at the beach, that I don’t think there were too many issues between them, which was pretty awesome.

Nick & Teresa’s friends Brandon & Jennifer met up with us there as well. (Brandon is also Angella’s husband’s brother.) (It’s a small world.) It was cool to see them again, and see their little boys. Daniel and Liliana hit it off as they collected rocks in the lake.

Before we all went our separate ways, we got a sweet group photo.

Me, Angella, Jennifer, Amanda, Carolyn (I think!) (A friend of Angella’s and Teresa’s.) (Right?!), and Teresa.

This photo is why I love Amanda so much. But, just to be a good friend, here’s a “normal” photo. Also because it has a classic Angella kissy-face.

That night (and the next), after the dirty little kids were bathed and in bed, Amanda and I crashed on her couch, ate freezies, and, among other things, talked about the crazy that is having four little girls under one roof. Yikes.

I wanted to finish the whole trip in one post, but I’m about to pass out and am actually shaking from exhaustion and I still have to put all the crap from the van away, so I’m going to cop out and end here, to finish tomorrow. I probably missed a whole bunch, just in this post, but oh well. Maybe one day I’ll learn to be a little more careful what I delete.

So the first stop was Langley, BC to see Nich and Teresa and Baby Eva. But before we could get there, about 10 km before 100 Mile House, we got a flat tire. Not fun, not impressed. Short story is that the spare got put on and we made it to Kal Tire, got a used tire put on, made it to Langley, went to go shopping, and found the tire flat AGAIN. So, this time we went to Walmart and got a brand new tire and it made it home. Who gets two flats in one day?????? Ugh, I wasn’t very happy about it. But then we met Eva and it was all good!

Eva’s World! (good one Kaylie)

Look here Eva!

Just woke up Kaylie?

Cousins!

Cutest baby in the world!

It was great to visit with them and meet Eva. She is definately a beautiful baby!! Kaylie loved being around her and five seconds after we left said that she missed her. Aww! Our next stop was Edmonton and the West Edmonton Mall!! Kaylie absolutely LOVED the rides. She is an adrenaline junkie!! We started out with the kiddie rides . . .

She had a blast and after every ride she sounded like that turtle on Finding Nemo, “That was awesome!!!!” After the mall we went to see Randee!! Look in the next blog for those pictures because I guess they won’t fit in this one. We also went to the Waterpark which was fun but the slides weren’t open so it wasn’t as great as it could have been.

We left Edmonton at about 8pm on Friday night. At 11pm I hit a deer. Seriously. No damage was done and nobody but the deer got hurt. I was going like 90 cuz it was in Jasper National Park and it was daaark and all of a sudden two deer came from the left side of the road. I slammed on my brakes and missed the first one. I totally thought I was going to nail the second one but I just his his hind legs. I hope he’s okay but I’m pretty sure his leg or legs are broken, which means he won’t last much longer. Needless to say we stayed in Jasper over night, left the next morning, and made it home safely. We owe it all to God for keeping us safe and Spitz for keeping me awake!