Answered Prayers

We didn't know what was going to happen with our apartment because we are supposed to give them 60 days notice. And when we bought the house that meant we would have the apartment until the end of October. This also meant that we would have to make a rent payment and a mortgage payment in September. That's a lot of money! So we called the landlord to see if we could get out of it and it didn't look like we could.

One of my colleagues overheard me talking about it and said, excitedly, "We're looking for an apartment, we want to downsize so we can save money for a house". I got super excited and we booked a time for her and her husband to come and see our apartment. We called the landlord and she told us that if we could find someone to rent for October 1 than September could be our last and "free" month. After they came to see our place, they realized that it would be too small for them. I was not totally surprised but started to worry again about having the apt until the end of October.

Then, yesterday, our landlady called and said there was someone in the building who was looking for a place (not sure why, maybe they wanted a river view or something) so could she show our place. I said sure and only after I hung up did I realize what a pigsty the place was, we hadn't done dishes or laundry in a few days! yikes! A few hours later, she called back and said they would take it starting October 1. So our prayers were answered and we are officially moving out on September 22.

33 Alberni St

As most of you have heard already, we finally bought a house!! Here it is.

It's an end unit townhouse in Barrhaven. Yep, I'm moving back to my old neighbourhood. It's not quite where my parents live but it's only about a 2 minute drive. It's within walking distance of Sobeys, Loblaws, Boston Pizza, Reitmans(yay!) and lots of other stores.
As you can see from these pictures, the house does need some work but this is what we were looking for and finally we found it, at the right price. We have already gone to Ikea to pick out cabinets, which was lots of fun! It has 3 bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of them but the front window is the master bedroom. There are 1 and a half baths and a partially finished basement.

The livingroom/diningroom, stairs going upstairs and the landing upstairs are all done in hardwood which is an older style but is still nice looking. The bedrooms have carpet in them that all need to be replaced.

The backyard/garden needs some work too as there a lot of weeds but the deck is sturdy and nice and big.
So, you might be wondering when we are moving in. Well, luckily the place is empty right now and we have a closing date of September 14!! That's in 17 days!! I know, crazy!! But, we have our appartment till the end of September and we need to do the carpets and the kitchen before we move in so it's not that big of a rush but still quite soon. I am actually happy that we get it right away because I'm already going nuts not being able to just move and start going on things! We all know that I can be a little impatient...:)

Come on over later this year....we can't wait to show it off.

Our weekend

Pete Gelms, Joel Muis and Julian vanPopta(the Groom)

Lorien VanPopta (on piano)

Laura vanPopta (nee Dubois)

The ceremony.

Mom and Pops at the reception.

the 3 Muskateers

" Spoiled? I don't see a Best Before Date"

Sitting up on her own and shoving massive objects in her mouth.

So Precious! The best feeling in the world is having a baby fall asleep in your arms.

Champagne! Happy Birthday, Pops!

Inevitably, the drive home.

Pictures from Presqu'ile

Jared's fancy hammock.

Necessity is the mother of invention (motto while camping).

Dad Helder preparing breakfast.

Reuben filling up the water jug.

Mom Helder making coffee, outdoors-style.

Trying to find some shade on this shadeless beach.

Relaxin' on the beach.

Awesome sunsets.

Jared, Reuben and Karin.

Poking fun at Jared; by the lighthouse.

The Helder family hikes together.

My Captain Cheerio!

Driving home.

More Summer Ramblings

We haven't found a house yet, in case anyone is curious. We went through the offer process again on a semi-detached bungalow that needed a lot of work but the seller did not want to accept our offer and then it was sold within the week to someone else who ended up paying $9 000 more than we were willing to spend. sigh! oh well. I wasn't that excited about it anyway. That was about 3 weeks ago and since then we haven't seen anything else on the market that has peeked our interest until last night. We arrived home from our camping trip to Presqu'ile and there was a message on our phone from our real estate agent regarding a house he had seen that matched our profile. So we checked online and found another one. One is in Kanata and one is in Barrhaven. We hope to go and see them this week.

We were camping at Presqu'ile this past weekend with Reuben's family. It was a really nice campground. The water and beach were beautiful! Our campsite was nice, off the beaten track with a comfort station close, but not too close. We had 2 days of beautiful sunshine until the rain swept in on Sunday evening. We ate a dinner of spaghetti in Dad Helder's work van. That was an adventure! Thankfully, it didn't get too cool at night so I was warm and slept well both nights. My only worry was the 2 garter snakes I saw slither across my path ... I am deathly afraid of snakes but Reuben was close by to cling on to so I got through it!:)

This weekend we leave on Thursday evening for Burlington, again. We are attending Julian VanPopta's wedding in Cambridge on Friday. And hopefully, on Saturday, we'll be hanging out with Hadassah (and her parents:) and my parents because it's my dad's birthday and they will be down for the wedding as well.

I'll try to get some pictures up soon.