Where Was I?

Oh yes. We moved back to my home province late in July and DH began work immediately. His first ‘week’ of work was comprised of 12 days, non-stop and close to 16 hour days. That was a little scary especially considering that, on his first day of work, my parents traipsed off to Gander Bay for a much needed rest (for Mudder, work on their house for Fadder) and I was left with Iain and Aidan for my first hours on my own. After day three I was less scared = less cranky and found out that I could do it. Aidan is an easy newborn and has been a pleasure to incorporate into our lives, which has really worked out as Iain has been much more challenging.

For most of the month of August, we were lucky enough to share the house with my youngest brother and his family. It was a little difficult negotiating toys and sharing between my four year old niece and my two year old son. It was also difficult for both of them to share toys that they each considered to be their own (the toys that Mudder keeps here for visiting children to play with). I was also feeling a great deal of pressure with house hunting with a newborn and feeling bad that I had dumped my whole family, a lot of luggage and our three pets onto my parents (my parents have been awesome and, apart from both boys exhausting all of us, have yet to complain about the upheaval we have caused), so was more than a little cranky and stressed during this time and into the fall.

In August, we also put an offer in on a house in the Quidi Vidi area of St. John’s and were happily making plans to move and picking out great grocery shopping areas when, ten days after the deal was supposed to close in September, it fell through. We were devastated. Additionally, we had made the mistake of bringing Iain to the new house so he continually asked when we were bringing our stuff from Nova Scotia and moving, questions we both found difficult to answer and exacerbated our feelings of guilt. I stopped looking for a new house for a few weeks after that.

October found us on an airplane and a quick trip to British Columbia for the interment of DH’s mother’s ashes. That was Aidan’s first flight across the continent (not the last I’m sure!) and the boys were great on their way West. We were only in BC for three days, less the travel days, so it was a fast and intense trip. The ceremony at one of Victoria’s beautiful cemeteries was lovely and Aidan slept through the whole event allowing me to chase Iain around, only coming back to the ceremony when it was our turn to lay red roses on the plot site. The trip did allow Grampa D, Aunt V, Great-Aunt R and Great-Uncle G to meet Aidan for the first time and enjoy playing with Iain who warmed up to his relatives nicely after a remarkably short period of time. He is a good kid.

Finally in November, after Aidan and I (and, occasionally, DH) viewed many, many homes, we found another house in Torbay that we liked. Torbay is a community on the Atlantic ocean just outside the city. Our new home has a view of the ocean, many features that we were looking for and then some and is close to the local school. We are thrilled and, I am pleased to say, it became ours on December 16th. We even spent our first night in it as a family by sleeping on the floor (on camping mats!) on New Year’s Eve.

DH heads off to NS tomorrow (Sunday) morning to start the process of reuniting us with our possessions after six months of separation. His work over the fall has meant several trips away to locations such as Hamburg, Germany and Brest, France. He seems to be averaging a trip at least once a month which I am sure to find challenging when we move out into our own home and I am separated from my parent’s babysitting support. However, we are eager to live closer to the Military Family Resource Centre which has become such a support to us this fall, as well as closer to friends. Not to mention, I think it’s high time I moved our not so little family into our own home and leave Mudder and Fadder some peace and quiet!

Our desk top computer was fading and that created a few months of coordination as my family and I negotiated the use of one functioning computer. Finally, DH (bless him!) decided that I needed my own little piece of electronic heaven in the form of an HP Mini and it is from that little gem that I’m typing right now.

I know I have not written in forever and I apologise for that. Thanks to all of you who dropped a note to see how we were doing or dropped by the blog to check on updates. Hopefully this post will help ease the dry spell. I love this blog. I love to write and I love the fact that the blog ‘forces’ me to practice that craft. I really plan to get back into writing for it regularly.

And, seeing as you have not seen us for so long, here are a couple of pictures of us from a very special morning last week.

Happy holidays and 2010. Share with you soon!