A Crazy Whirlwind Upending month

 Well, we've been offline for over a month now and a crazy lot has happened:

Dad took over the flooring project and finished upstairs while mom was finishing her work placement.

and then

Life went crazy as we decided to sell our house! We took on the monumental task of getting our house completely ready for sale in as short a time possible as soon as mom was done her placement. With a very long list of fixes and upgrades we dived into 3 weeks of really looong days of home renovation: replacing light fixtures, finishing the flooring on the main floor, replacing kitchen appliances, painting everywhere, etc.

And, in those crazy three weeks we managed to host two birthday parties for Aiden and Jasmin! Even when at the beginning of the day of Aiden's party our living room looked like this: 

This is what it looked like at party time: 

Not bad, eh? And now, at the end of the process, we feel like we live in a new house. It is an odd feeling, especially since so much of our things are packed away to make for better showings and the house is echoey and lacking our personal touches.

It is also a strange thing, after all the many, many moves we've made, that this is the first time we've had a for sale sign in the yard and experienced the continual disruption of showings. We're glad of that, as it is disrupting - but having a lovely clean house all the time is nice :)

And, seemingly almost as a reward, Imma came for a whirlwind weekend visit at the end of June!

And now we're trying to catch up everything that got dropped during our crazy home renovation weeks, and dreaming of where we might end up next month when our house sells. Well, that's not quite as open ended as it sounds: we know we're moving to Halifax, mostly to be near Jasmin's new work place, and then also to be near Mom's family.  Jasmin will be starting a co-op type work placement at Cartoon Conrad near Lower Sackville in August/September that could very well turn into a full-time job in her industry. So may our house sell quickly!

Spring! and Project Update

  Project status:  Mom finished Aiden's room! Except quarter rounds in the closet since we can't get in there till we move the flooring boxes... Now for the girls' room - at least the closet area where there is no furniture yet 🙃

Dad finished forgifted.org videos! More are planned, but not for a while yet, so we can catch up on other projects - and people can have to time to watch them all.

 Jasmin has a new dog. Not quite our type, but she has slipped into our household with hardly a ripple, offering us reasons to get out and enjoy the spring time and providing and receiving companionship. Unfortunately she has decided that dad is the one she likes to hang out with! Even deciding under his desk was the safest place to be during the recent thunderstorm... it took 3 of us to get her out to a more sensible place.

We managed to squeeze in an evening at the Tulip Festival. Unfortunately it was on the last weekend so it was packed with people and many of the flower beds were well past their best - some looking quite sun withered. Still, we managed to enjoy ourselves, take pictures, and even stayed long enough to catch the drone show. 

Even with Mom being out of the house "working" at her field placement for her studies, we managed to get out and enjoy spring...

  

We're not doing too badly keeping things going with Mom not around. She's mostly managed to put a lunch in the crockpot for everyone - only a few days has Dad had to actually make lunch - but definitely we are missing her being around and keeping things better run than they are without her. And in the evenings, everyone wants her but there isn't enough evening left, generally being only enough time for one proper reconnection and catchup...

And the flooring project languishes... and the audio recording... and many routine household tasks that can be left to languish :) The important ones are getting done though. Mom is done June 3rd and I think we will all be very happy to have her back!

Two weeks

Remember all those projects in parallel? 

Well...

Our renter left, so Mom dropped all her other projects and went over and camped out for three days to paint it - 40 hours of work in 3 days! But she enjoyed herself with lots of downloaded sermons from enduringword.com, and the pleasure of good work completed. God was gracious and she didn't get too stiff and sore to enjoy it.

Before she went, we finished with the basement section of the flooring replacement project and Dad began the upstairs while mom was gone - much more of a challenge with so many doorways! Now Aiden's room is just about done (needs quarter rounds and painting), the hallway is mostly done, and the girls' room is begun. The plan is to put Aiden's room back together on Monday and start preparing the girls' room on Monday. We're not doing any this weekend because...

That community-wide yard sale is tomorrow. Everything is organized and boxed and (mostly)priced courtesy of lots of work from Mom over the last month and sitting in the livingroom to be set out in the morning.

Last Saturday was Grace's 18th birthday party! She had 3 friends (with a few extra siblings/parents) spend the afternoon playing board games together. They had a blast! Grace and Aiden thoroughly enjoyed all the people, noise, and slight chaos, ending the day with a bounce, but Mom and Jasmin were more than ready for quiet and bed. Unfortunately, we were all so enjoying ourselves that we have no pictures at all of that lovely day :(

And Mom will not be doing much flooring or painting for the rest of May because on Tuesday she starts the final course of her Autism Studies - a 3 week, full-time field placement of observation in a private day-treatment center. So, the second half of May is going to be rather interesting...

Meanwhile...

Dad continues to make progress on forgifted.org - he's very almost done the last forgiveness video! And then, hopefully, he'll get to work on flooring so the girls don't have to live in a partial construction zone much longer.

Jasmin got another foster dog - who also already has been recalled for an adoption meet n greet this weekend!

Aiden finished his civics course so now he only has 3 courses left, one of which he is almost done as well.

Grace and Mom joined in the worship and prayer evening hosted by the National House of Prayer on Tuesday. It was a lovely evening hearing God news from "the Hill" and worshipping and praying together. We both agreed we need to join more of such times.

Mom managed to get 4 out of 13 chapters recorded and sent off for review. It's a new type of work that she's discovering she rather enjoys. That's good, because Jasmin wants her to record her book also - and that is a much longer project!

Projects in Parallel

 Dad: 

Writing, recording, editing videos for forgifted.org, his platform for publishing some applications of his PhD research.

Mom:

Recording an audio transcript of a book we often reference in counseling. It took a long time to sort out the contract with the author, but now it is all systems go.

PACE coursework

Planning and preparing for a community wide yard sale day May 11

Planning and preparing for a family birthday every 2 weeks for the next two months.

Grace:

Four more university courses of varying intensity and work loads (mostly heavy!).

Jasmin:

Back and forth with Friesen Press in the work of getting her first book published: editing and reediting, layout, cover picture picking, learning marketing, etc.

2 university courses and other informal coursework preparing for co-op in an animation studio in the Fall.

Aiden:

Finishing up his year of school.

All of us (but mostly Aiden and Mom):

Replacing the flooring in most of our house and all the side projects that come with renewing home projects - namely painting and window coverings and...

Oof. Writing it all down, looks like we have a busy Spring/Summer ahead - and perhaps it is a little unbalanced who is doing what :D